Battlemaster’s Corner – Alcast’s Summoner

We're thrilled this month to be able to feature a new Battlemaster's Corner build from ESO content creator Alcast! Read on to discover the Summoner, a Sorcerer build designed for PvE content.

The Summoner – By Alcast

The Summoner is a pet-focused Sorcerer build that features a huge Magicka pool and combat pets. In ESO, Magicka Sorcerers are a powerful class that can both summon different pets to fight for them and also deal out an insane amount of damage. When using this build, you can choose whether you want to run only one or both combat pets, and you'll find it'll works for solo play, dungeons, and Trials.

Armor and Weapons

This build runs a 5 Light, 1 Heavy, 1 Medium armor setup with all Magicka Enchantments on armor and Spell Damage or Magicka Recovery on the jewelry.

• 5x Law of Julianos set: Heavy Chest, Light Belt, Medium Pants, Light Shoulders, Infused Shock Staff frontbar with Shock Damage Enchantment, and Nirnhoned Shock Staff backbar with Spell Damange Enchantment (crafted set found in Wrothgar)
• 5x Necropotence set: Light Shoes, Light Hands, Necklace, and two Rings (found in Rivenspire)
• 1x Iceheart monster set: Light Head (looted from Veteran Direfrost Keep)

Attribute Points and Mundus Stones

Put all Attribute Points into Magicka.

Use the Mage Mundus Stone for even greater Max Magicka (found in Deshaan, Grahtwood, and Stormhaven).

Champion Points

This build uses all 660 Champion Points in the following ways:

• The Ritual
  • 75 Thaumaturge
• The Atronach
• The Apprentice
  • 58 Elemental Expert
  • 44 Elfborn
  • 43 Spell Erosion
• The Shadow
  • 50 Tumbling
  • 22 Shadow Ward
• The Lover
  • 49 Arcanist
  • 49 Tenacity
• The Tower
  • 50 Warlord
• The Lord
• The Lady
  • 49 Hardy
  • 49 Elemental Defender
  • 48 Thick Skinned
• The Steed
  • 48 Ironclad
  • 26 Spell Shield

Primary Bar Abilities

1. Destructive Clench - This is a strong single target ability that you should use before you weapon swap.
2. Hardened Ward - This ability is one of the most important ones. It gives you an insanely huge shield that protects you from any incoming damage. That is the reason why Sorcerers usually survive longer than other classes.
3. Inner Light (or Power Surge for solo players) - This ability increases Max Magicka by 7%. You do not use the skill in combat.
4. Bound Aegis (or Twilight Tormentor) - This ability increases Max Magicka by 8%. Like Inner Light, you do not use the skill in combat, but it has to be slotted on both bars to keep it activated.
5. Volatile Familiar - This pet can tank enemies, and if you activate its ability, it fires a strong area of effect (AoE) damage pulse that hits everything in a 5-meter range. Because pets scale off of your Max Magicka, it will deal an insane amount of damage.
6. Ultimate Ability: Shooting Star - This ability is used on large trash packs and is nice because the more monsters you hit, the more Ultimate points you regain.

Secondary Bar Abilities

1. Elemental Blockade (Blockade of Shock) - This ability is an AoE damage effect that has covers a huge area in a shock field. It also procs from Off Balance, giving us an additional 10% damage due to our Champion Points.
2. Liquid Lightning - Small shock AoE damage effect that deals an insane amount of damage. Friendly group members also can activate the synergy that deals good damage.
3. Daedric Prey - This ability deals damage on its own and it boosts our summoned monsters damage by 55% - crazy!
4. Bound Aegis (or Twilight Tormentor) – See above.
5. Volatile Familiar – See above.
6. Ultimate Ability: Elemental Rage - This ultimate can also be used on trash packs, and it is the strongest ultimate in the game and deals the most damage in a short period of time.

Additional Options

• Summoned Twilight Pet - Instead of Bound Aegis you can choose to have a second pet. If you play solo, you can use the morph that provides a strong heal. If you play in a group, I recommend choosing the damage morph.
• Power Surge - Instead of Inner Light you can also use Power Surge. This is especially helpful if you play alone. Keep up your shields and Power Surge and you can never really die.

As you see, we have a lot of damage over time (DoT) effects that we need to keep up. This is what makes this build so strong, as most of them are also AoE abilities, allowing them to hit multiple enemies. Because we have a lot of shock abilities, we can also proc Concussion a lot, which increases our damage by 8%. In addition to this, Concussion can proc Off Balance from the Blockade of Shock which again increases our damage by another 10% due to our Champion Points (75 Points in Thaumaturge and the "Exploiter" perk).

Passive Skills

You will need all the passives for the following Skill Lines:

• Dark Magic
• Daedric Summoning
• Storm Calling
• Light Armor
• Heavy Armor (for the Juggernaut Passive)
• Destruction Staff
• Vampire (optional)
• Mages Guild
• Racial
• Undaunted

Combat Strategy and Rotation

Strategy

Keep your Hardened Ward Shield up when you see a lot of incoming damage so your Health should always stay full. If you play solo, make sure to use Power Surge instead of Inner Light, that way you have a reliable heal at your disposal.

Rotation

You need to make sure you use a heavy attack, otherwise you will run into sustain issues really quickly.

Open with Liquid Lightning, then use Light Attack, Blockade of Storms (Elemental Blockade with the Shock Staff), your pet, Light Attack, Daedric Prey, then weapon swap and use Light Attack, Destructive Clench, Heavy Attack, then finally weapon swap again and restart!

What changed with Update 15?

With Update 15, we went from Sharpened to Infused/Nirnhoned and we changed the Mundus Stone from Thief to Mage as it now gives better results.

Update 15 also resulted in a change from the Moondancer set to Law of Julianos, as it is more accessible for most of the players and provides about the same DPS!

SUBMIT YOUR BUILD!

Thank you to Alcast for submitting a new Horns of the Reach-viable build. You can find this build on his website, so be sure to check it and his other builds out for any future updates. You can also find guides and builds on his YouTube channel.

Want to submit your own build for consideration? You can do so on our official form here. All builds welcome!